I've seen the information regarding the validity of these English translations, and I'm certainly well aware as I had to read it bearing through all of those bad translations.

However, though at some points difficult to read, and even granting that there may have been amendments or omissions for which Solzhenitsyn cannot be responsible; this only throws the book into a small degree of question in my opinion. Also I'll note here that there are several things within the book which no "name the Jew" type of person would ever want to read, such as a detailed account of the Nazi atrocities from several different sources. To say that even in this translated form that the reader has to be afraid of being mislead I would say is a lie likely from someone who believes they can retain Solzhenitsyn's credibility - perhaps because he's too big to simply slander as they do everyone else - and instead throw into question this translation.

Having read the entire book in this form, I can say that it is one of the greatest books I have ever read. The breadth of its transcendence above the lowly qualms you see especially today on this issue, while simultaneously dealing with all of the gritty details regarding those qualms, is absolutely incredible. One can simply keep in mind, although it's brutally obvious at times, that this is a pretty rough translation and that Solzhenitsyn didn't have his hand on the final product as he would have liked to.

I strongly disagree with both previous reviewers. This is not a one sided diatribe about naming the Jew and blaming them for the Bolshevik Revolution. However, by the same token; it is equally far from the truth to say that a good summary of this book would be that "Solzhenitsyn denies any Jewish conspiracy".

I was going to try to explain in short form what exactly Solzhenitsyn does in this book, but I realized in trying to do so that there is a reason he wrote the book.

I'll make one point as succinctly as I can to give the potential reader an idea of where he takes you in this book, because I really do recommend it to everyone.

In the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn speaks in a chapter called "The Soul in Barbed Wire" about the concept of "survival at any cost", where he makes it clear that what this really means is to survive at the cost of someone else's life. In other words, to survive, you will have to sell someone else out - for having done nothing wrong, maybe even lying about them - in order to draw the danger away from yourself. He talks about a phrase they would use in the camps; "you today, me tomorrow". And when he makes that point, he tries to address the issue of whether or not that is really living at all, that people who survive this way are some sort of living dead; physically alive but a shell of their former selves as a result of the moral price they've paid. Therefore, the author concludes, true survival is spiritual survival; and while one may die today or the next day, he or she will be able to hold their head high with dignity until that day comes. He has a beautiful few pages in that chapter, if you haven't read them I suggest you find them and read them. At the end of that chapter, he concludes in brackets saying (and some will undoubtedly be calling to me from the grave saying, "that's all well and good for you; you made it out alive"...) and he ends the chapter on that note..

In this way, Solzhenitsyn addresses incredibly difficult moral problems with total humility and yet to the best of his ability attempts to actually come to some valuable conclusion that he believes - after all due credit and caveat being given - he can hang his hat on. The result is incredibly moving and humbling.

This book, even to my shock over and over again, was no different. In that same way, in 200 Years Together, near the end of the book he lands on a few quotes from Jewish emigrants who fled Russia after the defeat of the White Army, a few of them having served in that army, many of which were Zionists. All of these men are writing in a paper they published together as a group; they were trying to get a particular view out which they believed was not getting out, and for which they were subsequently ostracized by the global Jewish community. I won't go into too much detail about it, except to say that these men eventually touch on this same concept, in this case regarding their own concerns for the sake of their co-religionists, of what they call a "culture of the soul".

What those men had to offer was incredibly beautiful, certainly nothing like either of these previous reviewers want to label so harshly as either THIS or THAT; as either anti-semitic or "naming the Jew".

However unfortunately, as the author himself points out, these men were denounced by the global Jewish community as "self-hating" and so on and forced into obscurity and then into quitting writing all together.

Solzhenitsyn perfectly combines the harsh facts of the matter with a totally sobering humility and Christian sense of responsibility and love for all people.

And having established a certain degree of credibility for this translation, I can say confidently that anyone who believes that everything Solzhenitsyn has ever said about the "Jewish Question" has been completely Kosher and that nobody would have any issue with it being published today is simply wrong. And that's an easy thing to say considering there is little to no leeway for discussing these issues. Even simply the fact that he openly discussed a "Jewish Question" is illegal in many countries today, and considered a completely forbidden topic in any mainstream sphere.

It's true that Solzhenitsyn never said that the Revolution was a "Jewish conspiracy". However his detailed diagnosis of the "Jewish Question" in Russia would get him called an anti-semite by everyone and their uncle today, there is simply no denying it. Those folks can either take responsibility for the fact that they are incapable of hearing different opinions from their own, or they can pretend that these things were never said. But the content, and the response it would illicit, is not remotely in question.

I'm giving 4/5 only to say that one should be weary that they aren't reading a final product with Solzhenitsyn's blessing. The book however in my experience was easily a 5/5

the preceding review is false on all counts. The key chapters of Solzhenitsyn's 200 Years Together detail the Jewish-communist nexus before, during, and after the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia: 5 of the 7 members of the first Politboro were Jews (Lenin, Bronstein-alias-Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Sverdlov), as were 80% of the top Reds who actively made the revolution. Jews were particularly prominent in the organs of State massacre and repression - 13 out of the 14 members of the death squad sent to murder the Czar and his family were Jews - and this pattern persisted well into the 1940's, despite Stalin's partial de-Jewing of the Party during the 1930's purges. The Terror Famine was run by Kaganovich, Stalin's left hand man, and NKVD chief Yagoda, both Jews. And the reason no quality full English translation and publication of 200 Years Together has ever occured should at this point be obvious: a certain Power-that-shall-not-be-named has prevented it.

"The book is one of the most banned books in modern history."

Hardly, the book is actually a bestseller (Russian/French editions) with over 3 million copies sold. The reason it has yet to be translated into English is because Solzhenitsyn considered it a low-priority; his main works being, "The Red Wheel" a tome of over 6,000 pages. "Two Hundred Years Together" will be translated in an authorized edition afterwards.

"Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies (in Chapters 9 and 14) that the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were the result of a "Jewish conspiracy" (just as he had earlier forcefully criticized the extreme nationalists who were and are obsessed with Freemasons and Jews—see, e.g., Russia in Collapse, Chapter 25, “The Maladies of Russian Nationalism”)." [...] Meanwhile, readers need to be forewarned that any and all English versions [of 'Two Hundred Years Together'] available on the Internet... are illegal, pirated, and/or entirely unauthorized; often poorly and loosely translated; and redact passages, and indeed whole chapters, that apparently do not support the prejudices of those behind these illegal editions."

https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/his-writings/large-works-and-novels/two-hundred-years-together